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WordPress

Ben Lockett
Ben Lockett
22,419 Points
Posted by Ben Lockett
Ben Lockett
22,419 Points

To Wordpress or not To Wordpress

Wordpress... My initial (Ignorant) thoughts were that it was for designers/creators that wanted a theme based development to lower the requirement of coding and incorporate CMS. Is this wrong?

I seem to be stumbling across many reputable WebDesign companies that state that development is done in Wordpress. This got me questioning my initial thoughts.

My strengths are not in front end development but I do have a love for it. I feel more at home with the likes of PHP.

So my question is do I venture into Wordpress (Is is worth it?) or do I strengthen my knowledge in PHP and JS?

Many thanks for taking the time to read my post.

4 Answers

Dustin Matlock
Dustin Matlock
33,856 Points

Hi Ben, sometimes it's not what you use, but what you do with it. That may be the thought initially, however, I can assure you there are some very dedicated WordPress developers out there. You might also note it matters a bunch what you are trying to accomplish. For blogging I might recommend someone try Ghost or Jekyll.

https://ghost.org/

http://jekyllrb.com/

Andrew Molloy
Andrew Molloy
37,259 Points
Andrew Molloy
Andrew Molloy
37,259 Points

It's not mutually exclusive. I see Wordpress as a great content management system to get into without requiring coding knowledge at all. But it has the depth and customisability to allow you to delve as deep as you want to in the coding side. In fact I think it's perfect to increase and practice your PHP skills and knowledge. Really it comes down to what you want to use it for. But don't think it's just a front end only system, creating themes and plugins for example are all PHP heavy in required skill. In fact take a look at the Wordpress Theme creating course here to get an idea of how much back end development you can do in WP.

And take it even further looking at using Bootstrap and Wordpress. All the PHP and JS skills you need here are perfectly usable from a "website from scratch" point of view, using modern frameworks to build your own site or even your own CMS that's not related to Wordpress.

Ben Lockett
Ben Lockett
22,419 Points
Ben Lockett
Ben Lockett
22,419 Points

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for taking time to answer my question.

I will take the dive into Wordpress and see how I get on.

Thanks again

Ben Lockett
Ben Lockett
22,419 Points
Ben Lockett
Ben Lockett
22,419 Points

Hi Dustin,

Thank you for answering.

I have nothing exact in-mind, I just want to explore all valuable avenues in my development. I am working on a project at the minute for work (although my job has absolutely nothing to do with web design) which involves lots of MySQL/PHP/JS/HTML/CSS so that has been my main focus. I enjoy every aspect of web design up to now so just wanted to see if Wordpress was worth looking into next, From the response off you and Andrew it is going to be my next development.

Thanks again